


The Goodbye Way

by jerseydevious



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, brought to you by coffee! the wonder drink that keeps me alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 22:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17969201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: At seventeen, Bruce Wayne is what a trainwreck would look like if it could talk.





	The Goodbye Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts).



> I redeemed my angst card since that last fic.

The houses of the exorbitantly wealthy were designed with two living spaces; those for the family and their guests, and those for their servants. Bruce had spent a lot of time as a young child disappearing into them—they were cramped and dark and everything he rather liked in a place, and it was also where Alfred tended to be most often, and Bruce as a child had loved to be everywhere Alfred was. There were service hallways everywhere, from the kitchens and utility rooms and servants’ quarters into the grand foyer, the two elegant ballrooms on either side (one of which was most commonly used as a dining hall), the dining room, and then an entrance near the greenhouses. 

 

Bruce fumbled with his key for a minute—December in Gotham had all the bite of a wolf but none of the heat—and then jammed it into the lock, fiddling until the door gave way with a creak. Alfred rarely used these hallways, anymore, and the door was stuck from years of disuse. The challenge would be later, when Bruce had to make it to his own room. The Manor was old and had old bones. Alfred had the ears of a owl and when he was properly ticked, the talons of one, too. 

 

Bruce limped carefully along, leaning his shoulder against the wall, letting his aching hands hang by his sides. He didn’t dare turn on the light. He got bold just past the kitchen and limped faster, only for the tip of his shoe to get caught and his already tested ankle wrenched further as he fell to the ground with an animal groan he kept from turning into a scream through the sheer force of his teeth through his tongue. 

 

_ Don’t do it,  _ Bruce begged, silently, forehead pressed to the cool wood. It stung the jagged cut there but soothed the bruising around it.  _ Please. _

 

The light flicked on, because Bruce had pissed away his one lucky break when he was eight and survived a mugging he shouldn’t have. “Heavens,” came the quiet voice behind him. 

 

“I  _ tripped,” _ Bruce snarled. Even his meanest snarl couldn’t hide the fact that his voice was throaty and muffled, from the blood in his mouth and his swollen lip. 

 

There was a pause. Long and heavy, and Bruce could just see Alfred watching him, considering. Careful eyes landing on the bend in his injured leg, the lack of weight it was bearing, what must surely have been blood and spit dribbled over the polished floor.

 

Then Alfred said, “If you have only tripped, sir, then I daresay it is high time to stop rubbing your nose into the dust.”

 

Anger thrummed through him. Bruce spread his palms against the floor and pushed up, deliberately putting weight on his swollen ankle—maybe he could hide that, at least for a while yet—until he was standing, the black edges of his vision crawling forward with every passing moment. 

 

It was quite a bit harder to parse Alfred’s expression with one eye—it was disappointment, probably, taking in Bruce’s swollen face, the hand instinctively hovering over his throbbing gut where a pair of steel-toed boots had driven home over and over and over. Disappointment, staring at his pathetic, worthless—

 

There was a hand, brushing the hair out of his eyes. Bruce gritted his teeth to avoid leaning into it. “Look at me,” Alfred said, softly.

 

Bruce shook his head. “M’goin’ t’bed.”

 

“Soon enough. Now, the kitchen.”

 

Bruce tried to take a step forward, but his leg seemed to reach its maximum tolerance for the night, because he pitched forwards. Alfred caught him under his arm and hauled him upright. The movement pulled on his aching side and Bruce groaned, panting and his skin feverishly hot with the pain of it. Alfred helped him hobble to the island, and half-lifted him into one of the high chairs. Alfred pulled another chair around in front of Bruce, and gingerly, with a lot of hissing on Bruce’s part, elevated it.

 

Alfred started there, rolling up the leg of Bruce’s pants to feel the swollenness of it through his black sock. “I’ll need this shoe off, sir.”

 

Bruce’s ears were burning with shame, now, and the only thing he could say was a weak, “Yes.” Alfred carefully worked off his shoe, and rolled down the sock, looking at the black-and-blue inflated mess of his leg. 

 

“We’ll need to see Dr. Thompkins.” 

 

“I don’t—wanna,” Bruce growled. “I won’t.”

 

Alfred turned to him, still half-bent over his ankle, and raised a brow. “I see. You sneak out of your comfortable, warm house, disappear for hours, return intoxicated and beaten, and still believe I will allow you to make your own decisions regarding your health. Clearly, this scuffle has cost you more than a few brain cells.”

 

“M’not stupid,” Bruce said. 

 

Alfred straightened. “Indeed. You are very far from it. You see now, why this behavior is so absolutely daft—you are an intelligent young man, yet acting so foolish.” 

 

Bruce stared at his lap. His hands were covered in blood; his, and the man he’d hit with a beer bottle, and then beaten to a pulp.

 

“I had no idea where you were. Nor did Dr. Thompkins, or any responsible adult, and you could have—you—” Alfred swallowed, looking away. Bruce watched in open wonder. Alfred’s poker face was rarely broken. “You were lucky to have only been… attacked. But how are we to press charges, when you’ve been  _ drinking—” _

 

“I started it,” Bruce said.

 

Alfred’s eyes were cold. “Excuse me, sir. I must have heard you wrong. Repeat yourself, kindly.”

 

_ “I _ started it!” Bruce snapped. “I was there watchin’ him the whole—whole time. He was a creep. Stealing—touching. He was… creepy. I was mad.”

 

“That’s not justification for assault,” Alfred said. “Bruce, have you quite lost your mind?”

 

Bruce sat up. Something about the solitary  _ Bruce _ made anger boil in his belly. “I gave—gave everyone their money back! I took it back from ‘im, ‘cause, ‘cause you can’t steal like that. That’s wrong.”

 

Alfred stared at him. “Master Bruce, you are not a deputized officer of the law. You had no right to resort to brutality—”

 

“What’s th’point of the law,” Bruce snarled, “If it doesn’t  _ fix  _ anything.”

 

Alfred’s hands were shaking. “You are  _ seventeen.  _ It is not your position to fix the system, anymore than it is mine to design rockets to be sent to space. And certainly, even if you were to find yourself in a position to clean up after the police, you would refrain from doing it so  _ stupidly.” _

 

Bruce’s face burned. His throat was thick as if he’d swallowed a river stone, and his eyes throbbed in his skull. “It—it makes me angry,” he said. “I can’t… can’t breathe, ‘cause it makes me so angry. S’not right. S’not right for people to walk away. They can’t… they can’t just not catch ‘im.” 

 

Alfred’s eyes softened, and his shoulders curved downward. “My boy,” he said, quietly, “life… is not going to be fair—”

 

“It  _ should _ be!” Bruce shouted. “It  _ can _ be! There’s no—there’s not a reason it can’t! It’s not fair! Why did he get t’walk away, why didn’t I, why didn’t—”

 

There were arms around him, now, squeezing him tightly. Tears, Bruce realized, dully, were streaking down his own face, scorching hot. “Why didn’t he kill me too,” Bruce mumbled in Alfred’s shoulder. “Why didn’t he, why didn’t he, I didn’t  _ wanna _ walk away—”

 

“Don’t talk like that,” Alfred snapped. The arms around Bruce were nearly crushing. 

 

“M’sorry.”

 

“Oh, Bruce,” Alfred sighed. He stood upright, and Bruce hurriedly wiped his face with his sleeve, trying to hide not only his tears but the disappointment he felt at losing Alfred’s vice-like grip. “I’ll—I’ll fetch some water, my boy.”

 

Bruce stared hard at his hands in his lap, looking at the split and bruised knuckles, swollen twice their size. He remembered his fist coming down on the other man's face, one after the other, but mostly he remembered the joylessness of it. After the first punch, it had felt less like rage, and more like a labor, until he'd returned the money and something in his chest clicked swiftly into place. A delayed reaction, it must've been. “I didn’t mean t’ruin our… holiday.” 

 

“You haven’t ruined anything,” Alfred said, from the sink. The golden lights over the sink glinted off of his silver hair, reminding Bruce of the nebulous day in a nebulous future where there wouldn't _be_ an Alfred Pennyworth at all, and Alfred would have wasted so much of his life on Bruce, instead of on the family he could've had. Bruce's heart thudded, heart, once, twice, with guilt. “Except, of course, your health.”

 

Alfred came back around the island and pressed a cup into Bruce’s hands. “Drink up. The more you drink, the less severe your headache will be come the morning.”

 

Bruce folded his hands around the glass and took a deep gulp of it. “M’sorry for bein’ a disappoin’men’ an’ all.”

 

Alfred jerked to a stop, like a car with the parking brake thrown suddenly. “Goodness gracious. Is that truly what you think?”

 

Bruce kept his head turned down, saying nothing at all. Alfred tipped his head upward with a finger and looked him directly in the eye.

 

“Tell me. Is that _truly_ what you think?”

 

“Maybe,” Bruce murmured. At Alfred’s unimpressed look, he amended his words: “Yes.”

 

“You think incorrectly. You have disappointed me, as you did tonight. But that is not what you are, and it will never be. Do you understand me?”

 

Bruce screwed his eyes shut. They were dry and hot, again. “Yes.”

 

“Do me the courtesy of looking me in the eyes as you say it, Master Bruce.”

 

Bruce opened his eyes and said, “Yes,” and jerked his head away as fast as possible, staring down at his blood-dusted hands and trying to control the bright redness of his cheeks and ears, the redness that was spreading down his chest. 

 

A hand dropped into his hair, smoothing it back, teasing out lumps of blood and dirt from his hairline. Bruce shuddered and this time, there was no amount of willpower he could muster up that would keep him from leaning into it. It felt like the sun had opened up in a dark room.  


 

“I fear for you,” Alfred said, softly. “You cannot—continue to do this, Master Bruce. You cannot live like this, in and out of danger, of catastrophe—you’re reckless, you’re angry. We must find something better for you. More stable.”

 

What Bruce wanted to say was,  _ I think stability is killing me, _ because whatever driving force was inside him, pushing him forward, it was not pushing him towards a wife and two and a half kids and a dog and a cushy place as CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Something in him wanted desperately for something more, but whatever _more_ was, he had no idea. 

 

What he ended up saying was, “I feel bad. All th’time.” 

 

There was a shaky sigh beside him. “I know,” Alfred said, and his voice sounded weak and thready. 

 

It was the way Alfred sounded, then, that undid him for good. Bruce breathed in gasps, and tears were flowing from his eyes steadily now, and he choked out, “Go, go, just go—please just go, go—I wanna go to sleep, leave—”

 

Alfred’s hand continued to comb through his hair. “You’re quite alright.” 

 

“M’ _not,”_ Bruce hissed. 

 

This seemed to catch Alfred off guard, because he stopped saying those quiet, soothing things, but leaned against Bruce slightly and his hand never stopped its constant motion. 

 

“Why does _ —hic— _ it still hurt so bad,” Bruce said, scrubbing at his face furiously. The bruises ached, but the pain seemed to center him, and in a moment of wild thought he slammed the base of his palm into his swollen eye so hard he stars. 

 

“Master Bruce!” Alfred said, grabbing his wrist. “There will be absolutely none of that.”

 

Bruce relished Alfred’s hand wrapped around his, felt the ghost of it when Alfred dropped it back in his lap. He remembered being a kid and staying pressed to Alfred’s side all day long, and for a moment he desperately, desperately wished he could have that again—now, there was a hollowness he couldn’t quite seem to shake. His skin crawled all the time. When Bruce had gotten old enough to be properly ruthless, he had lost the right to stay by Alfred’s side, and now there was a distance between them that had never been there before. No matter how many people were in the room, no matter what room he was in, it seemed Bruce would always be alone in it; the more he tried to embrace it the more it hurt, but still he kept marching further and further away.  

 

“I miss you,” Bruce said. 

 

“I have never left you.”

 

“Y’know what I mean,” Bruce said. “S’not the same.”

 

“I have never left you, and I never plan to,” Alfred insisted. “Master Bruce, what on Earth are you talking about?”

 

“I turn eighteen. Soon. Two months. An’ m’goin’ away. T’school. An’ when I get back, it’ll be different. Maybe you won’t be scared of me, anymore.” 

 

“I supposed,” Alfred said, “that simply saying that I am not scared of you, only for you, wouldn’t change your mind.”

 

Bruce shook his head. “Don’ wait up for me. Go get a life.”

 

Alfred looked at him, then, and it was a look Bruce would never forget, because it was maybe the saddest thing he had ever seen. “Child… you  _ are _ my life.”

 

Then Alfred was moving away. He stopped in the doorway to say, “I’ll be phoning Dr. Thompkins. Finish that glass.” 

 

And he was gone, and the room was genuinely empty, and Bruce hadn’t felt this alone since he’d watched his parents' blood spill slowly on blistering cobblestone.   
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> I REDEEMED MY ANGST CARD SINCE THAT LAST FIC.


End file.
